Travelling External GPU Ideas

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p3taoctane
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Looking for some thoughts and crazy ideas...

Going to New Zealand for Christmas and want to be able to render on one card while I am there... until the cloud becomes available because I travel with a MacBook Air I want to take one decent card to render on.

The thing I am looking for ideas... is that I do not want to take a huge power supply with me....

If you were to to take one card and size and weight and power consumption was your biggest issue... how would you build it??? It seems to me the power supply is the heaviest thing.

Any ideas?

Peter
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glimpse
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I've been on this & could say from my research I end up with getting & disassembling Akitio (taking out PCB), used regular ATX PSU, but space/weight matter go for SFX PSU & then GPU of Your choise (like mITX to save some space) - best deal You can get & for reasonable amount =)
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p3taoctane
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Thanks man
Thats where I got too... but I was hoping to find a smaller PSU and weight etc.

Peter
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glimpse
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p3taoctane wrote:Thanks man
Thats where I got too... but I was hoping to find a smaller PSU and weight etc.

Peter
SFX PSUs are pretty small in comparison to regular ATX bricks =) just get proper one with fully modular wires. You can jump start it with the pin directly =) without any need to attached 24pin wire. the only wires will be power cord from the wall & one for GPU with 6+8 & one for Akitio (have to put barrel on it =)
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p3taoctane
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Yeah you are right mate that is smaller than I thought.

Good call!

Peter
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prehabitat
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Maybe look at USFF/rack server cartridge psu too; its shape will be more aligned with a GPU and you might be able to get down to something around 300*90*110mm (gpu+psu) if you're clever with your case design.

Could put a switch on green+black too to save jumping it the other way...

Seems like a pretty cool project: esp with thunderbolt to PCIE.
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p3taoctane
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That could be a great idea.
The power connectors that plug into the back of one of those things look like they are made for Dual Power supplies. I wonder if they make single ones.

This could work ... will dig a little into it... if any one has tried this and has some feedback... love to hear it. :D
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prehabitat
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I'm pretty sure there are rack servers that don't have redundant power... Not 100% though.

Might make things easier for yourself looking into SFF psu from the Core2Quad era; might get something up over 200w and you'll get PC oriented outputs/cables...

Power headroom will be your only issue. also I'm not sure if the SFF PSU would be a single rail; or the 200w might not be usable in one place...
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p3taoctane
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Thanks.. if cloud rendering with Octane was around I would not be as interested in a solution... but until then....

Appreciate your brain cycles

Peter
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p3taoctane
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GTX 970 Mini ITX Overclocked 4GB GDDR5 PCiE Video Card GV-N970IXOC-4GD

Any bad experiences with this little bad boy?

4gigs ram
Looks like only one 6 pin power connector needed

Might be a good travel candidate?
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